The five small children, from 7 months to 5 years old, were all flown by emergency helicopter to a Salt Lake City children’s hospital for treatment in the fall of 2020 and went through extensive treatment for acute liver failure.
The Southern Nevada Health Authority coordinated an investigation with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Kemp said.
All the children were able to avoid having liver transplants, Kemp said, but only after their parents accepted transplants as a real possibility and signed consent forms for them. Three adults also fell ill.
Meanwhile, the company’s lawyer, Joel Odou, acknowledged that the company’s product was defective.
“There shouldn’t have been one drop of hydrazine in the water, not one,” he said.
The company has accepted responsibility for each plaintiff’s past medical costs, he said — the highest running over $350,000 for one of the children.
But Odou said punitive damages are not warranted where no one had expected, anticipated, or understood the presence of hydrazine — including a plaintiffs’ expert.
